The Black Lives Matter movement has ensured diversity is now firmly on the risk register – where it always should have been – for business leaders everywhere.

But although we’re now seeing swift reactions and the internet covered with statements and pledges, it will be in six-to-12 months’ time that we see which organisations mean what they say – and which don’t.

Yes, the morality of the issue means it’s an essential element of any business strategy – but there’s also the increased risk to an organisation’s brand, not to mention the proven argument that having a diverse group of people working in an inclusive environment drives better results.

From seeing heads of diversity and inclusion (D&I) viewed as “non-essential staff” and laid off at the beginning of the lockdown, there is now a clamour for D&I expertise. But it needs to be a clamour with a plan, and the things that need to be addressed remain the same – accountability for change, measurable action, an overhaul of internal processes, making everyone an ‘ally’ and ensuring procurement teams are driving change.

So what steps can fintech organisations take to rise to the challenge and position themselves as world-class D&I leaders?

Quotas are important – but only if you already have an inclusive culture. They will make no difference at all in organisations where a toxic environment is allowed to reign supreme. At the moment the focus is largely on race – which is as it should be – but we’ve still got issues with nearly every other diversity group, some of which have had far more focus than race for far longer. Quotas on their own are not enough.

Training is also not enough on its own. For it to make a difference, leaders need to be pulling the major levers that should sit behind training initiatives. They need to understand that diversity is a strategic issue – and, right now, a business risk. Frank, no-holds-barred conversations are required and senior teams should be backing their chief executive officers to ensure we have no more false starts and window dressing.

This is also the time to get procurement involved. Any organisation that is a vendor to anyone right now is vulnerable to a procurement policy that forces them to demonstrate inclusion. It’s crucial to avoid waiting until it’s too late.

Creating inclusion should also be part of any performance review. It’s not that hard to do – it just means asking every people manager in an organisation: “What have you done to drive inclusion and what evidence do you have?” What is hard is weighting this – and rewarding for it. Individuals’ activities also need to be measured – and they need to be helped to change things, where necessary.

A strategic D&I plan covering three-to-five years is required for most businesses. It should be as robust as any profit and loss plan – and be both invested in and held to account. Leaders also need to be prepared to be vulnerable. If they don’t believe they are part of the problem, nothing will really change.

The moral issues are important but they have to resonate with everyone. Creating an inclusive culture enables everyone in an organisation who wants to succeed to do so.

The UK fintech is rightfully regarded with envy as the zenith of technical innovation in the sector worldwide.  Aided in no small way by a sympathetic regulatory environment that no longer eyes fintech with suspicion, rather as a necessary evolution.  Banks, quite sensibly, now seek to foster innovation by supporting start-up ideas with resources via incubation projects in return for first refusal on the resulting technology.

Customer demand, however, evolves quickly and this gives me reason to believe that where fintech businesses are flourishing, traditional banks are failing to keep up with the level of expectation that these customers are looking for.  To their detriment, traditional financial services have been slow to adapt to a fast-changing retail environment, as the pace of innovation has been glacial, hobbled by red tape.

Unsurprisingly, agile fintech businesses have sprung up, keen to take advantage of exploiting the zeitgeist.  As the millennials come of age, and more importantly wealth, the previous generations brand loyalty is thrown out of the window. Indeed, they are more likely to access digital services and inherently trust in new technologies.

With so many of these fintech platforms to choose from, we can only marvel at the perfect storm of open banking, the seemingly unstoppable rise of big data, the ability of social media to grow leviathan brands almost overnight, automated KYC legitimising pure digital propositions, an increasing skilled UK tech workforce, and government funding for fintech innovation.


In my view, this disruption of traditional banking is akin to an unstoppable juggernaut! Fintech has held banks to account, by giving the consumer an alternative. Today’s consumer now demands better service, more accessibility, modern technology, copious buying choices, and competitive fee structures, in all our interactions.  By “eating the lunch” of the traditional banks, fintechs have issued the ultimatum: adapt or fail.

They’ve done this because they’ve raced ahead when it comes to offering innovative banking. Moreover, those who have had the misfortune of providing cutting edge technology to large banks, the buying cycle alone can take up to 18 months, assuming you have leaders sympathetic to substantial tech upgrades.  Then of course you have to factor what is normally a broader change management program, and the time for integration.  Thus, a relatively small fintech can sprint to create industry-wide change before a bank has allowed their managers to tie their shoelaces and issue an RfI!

Historically, banks offer tradition, history and legacy, although many believe they have become  behemoths, more interested in globalisation than sticking to their traditional core values, banking origins and principals. Conversely, the fintech community are relatively new by comparison, but the signs are they offer a more efficient and much better perspective to banking and financial services fit for purpose for the 2020s.

The post-war ‘baby boomer’ generation will continue to access the “traditional” brands and products. GenX and the proceeding cohorts will take a “pick and mix” attitude to the financial products and methods of interacting.  The more interesting question is how some of the leviathan FS/IB brands manage to adapt to increasing complexity of requirements and subtlety of consumer segmentation whilst remaining competitive.

Fintech and traditional financial services have a somewhat fractious relationship; essentially modern technologies are eating their lunch, so there is a feeling of evolve or see another great brand wither to nothingness.  Great work is being done in fintech incubators sponsored by banks, where they work hand in glove to foster innovation.  It is cheering to see regular acquisition/investment in UK fintech scene by mainstream banks, and you cannot underestimate how much “white labelling” of niche technologies goes on under the radar.

Long gone are the days where a bank can rely on the lifelong loyalty of a customer.  Today’s consumer now demands better service, more accessibility, modern technology, copious buying choices, and competitive fee structures, in all our interactions. Moreover, in the younger generations, there is a pervading feeling that the current financial infrastructure is not fit for purpose.  It remains to be seen what trends dominate catalysed by the once-in-a-generation event that has been coronavirus.

In conclusion, one hopes they can learn from each other and equally positively impact the industry.

Fintech fosters: a speed of innovation, the ability to fail hard and fast, the joy of unblinkered thinking, optimism for the future.  Banks, for their part, can provide a supportive environment for modernisation, lobbying of government, development of a skilled workforce, and, most importantly the investment for true innovation to thrive.

Frankly, one industry cannot exist without the other.

The Coronavirus pandemic is proving to be the boost needed for fintechs to gain traction with consumers who have been hesitant to move their finances online. With prolonged social distancing measures and lockdowns around the globe, the world is getting a crash course on why accelerated fintech adoption is necessary. History proves that crises can work to accelerate adoption of new technologies. The 2008 financial crisis moved a notable portion of traditional financial institutions’ customers over to the fintech sector and urged the banks to invest heavily in their technology and digital strategies. The present Coronavirus crisis is the biggest opportunity yet for fintechs to break habits and meet the needs of consumers who now need, more than ever, to take care of their financials remotely instead of through in person visits to brick and mortar stores.

The Move to Fintech is a Global Trend

According to data analysis from App Annie, Japan, South Korea, the U.S. and China saw the biggest uptick in time spent on fintech apps during the first week of March 2020, compared to the last week of 2019 at 55%, 35%, 20%, and 20% respectively. Countries all over the world have seen a sharp rise in fintech adoption. Latin America already had a high fintech adoption rate prior to the onset of Coronavirus, however, the rapid spread of the pandemic has spurred even greater adoption. Fintech apps in Europe saw a 72% rise in usage in March. Southeast Asian countries such as Indonesia and Philippines are struggling with the pandemic, but fintech companies which offer remote financial services continue to thrive. Clearly, the adoption of fintech is a global phenomenon.

Here are three of the best performing fintech sectors that have gained growth momentum in the midst of the pandemic to seamlessly be adopted into our everyday lives.

Digital Payment Services

Consumers in lockdowns are rapidly turning to e-commerce, even in sectors that have been relatively slower in attracting online consumers such as groceries and household essentials. A study by Mckinsey & Company found that within one month of lockdown in Italy, e-commerce transactions soared 81%. To facilitate these online transactions, consumers are forced to sign up for digital payment services which allow them to send and spend funds digitally. Even consumers who had a stubborn preference for in-person shopping are opening accounts for digital payment services. PayPal, one of the biggest online payment processors, gained 20.2 million new accounts in 2020 Q1, with about 250,000 new users joining every day in April amid the pandemic. Naverpay and Kakaopay, two of Korea’s leading payment providers, both reported 49.4% and 68% sales growth respectively in the first quarter of 2020 compared to the previous year. The direct-deposit volumes for Square Inc.’s digital payments tool, CashApp, roughly tripled from March to April. Inflow of new users meant to be temporary during the lockdown are likely to become a permanent customer base. 

B2B online payment infrastructure providers like Adyen and Stripe are expanding their business during the crisis as well. These companies are responsible for providing the technology to make it easier for companies like Amazon, Lyft, and Shopify to accept online payments and bill customers. Notably, Stripe raised $600 million in equity just in the month of April and its valuation grew dramatically to reach $36 billion as investors saw growth potential of online payments growing day by day. Online payment infrastructure providers are expected to continue enjoying this growth momentum as the volume of online payments will not be declining any time soon. Curbside pickup and online shopping for an expanded range of products are habits that will likely stick even after lockdowns end.

Digital Lending

Digital lending platforms have moved fast to respond to the surge of loan applications triggered by business shutdowns and layoffs. Incumbent banks alone have not been able to meet the needs of borrowers. Tech-powered digital lenders have proven to be much more nimble and effective in screening borrowers and issuing loans during the pandemic. In March, PeopleFund, the number one digital lender in Korea focused on consumer finance, attracted $1 billion worth of loan applications and saw a 123% increase in loan applications compared to the same period last year. The increase in the sheer quantity of loan applications indicates the shift of borrowers turning to easily accessible online digital lenders, compared to physical branches of traditional financial institutions. The increase in loan applications also means PeopleFund has more data points to input into its proprietary machine learning credit scoring system (CSS) which is continuously updated to make more accurate credit decisions and reflect changing customer behavior in real-time.

Like many fintech companies, PeopleFund and other digital lending platforms saw an expansion of its customer demographics during the pandemic. Prior to Coronavirus, the majority of users were tech savvy people in their 20s and 30s. Since the pandemic hit, older users in their 40s and 50s who preferred traditional banks have also started to turn to digital lenders. In fact, in the U.S., digital lenders such as Funding Circle and Kabbage have helped funnel millions of dollars in emergency aid to small business owners by participating in the Paycheck Protection Program. Powered by technology, fintech lenders have been able to offer faster and more convenient loan approvals. 

Digital Investing

Investing apps have also gained popularity amid the pandemic lockdowns. Digital investment platforms aim to make investing easier and have started to add other financial functions such as bank accounts, debit cards, and more. With more people staying at home and looking for better returns than what passive savings accounts offer, digital banks and investing apps are having a moment.

Robinhood and Stash are two fintech startups that have gained traction during the pandemic. Robinhood, a mobile trading app, added a record 3 million new accounts in the first quarter. Stash, another mobile money management app, announced closing its Series F round despite market uncertainty. As people all around the world had to work from home because of Coronavirus, these digital investing platforms were well positioned to accommodate a huge spike in users. Millennials’ growing interest in the high-risk, high-rewards stock market also accounts for the surge of new trading accounts.

Fintech Built into Consumer Habits

Despite the devastation and loss brought on by Coronavirus, it has also given fintechs an unprecedented opportunity to rapidly grow its user profile, geographical foothold, and reputation. Fintech adoption which was expected to take years was shortened to just a few months as a result of the pandemic. Adaptation and agility are core traits of the fintech industry and vital to overcome the current economic uncertainty. As such, the dominant players in the fintech industry are well poised to deliver the digital needs of consumers and will ultimately be ingrained in consumers habits even after a vaccine is finally found.

As corporate campuses begin to fall from favour, businesses will need to find new ways to attract and retain the best and brightest of Generation Z, writes Jacqueline Anderson, HR Director, Nintex.

Before the coronavirus pandemic began up-ending economies and societies around the world, the campus-style workplace had been strongly positioned as a preferred benefit for the younger generation. Since the 1990s, major organisations have vied with each other to offer more and fancier facilities to their employees.

"Managers will need to invest time in understanding what motivates each team member and then look for opportunities to align the individual’s interests with the work that needs to be done."

Google’s Silicon Valley Googleplex, for example, features free laundry rooms, swimming pools, multiple volleyball courts, eighteen cafeterias and a fleet of bicycles to enable employees based at a nearby development facility to shuttle between the two sites.

Facebook’s headquarters boast ball-pit meeting rooms, acres of rooftop gardens, complete with walking trails and tepee swings, a coffee shop, burrito bar, pizza window and a sit-down restaurant.

Here in Australia, we also have our share of organisations which present their workplaces as homes-away-from-home, with video games, free food and permission to bring pets in for the day.

Although presented as a benefit to employees, these facilities and perks have invariably been designed with a couple of purposes: to attract the best and brightest young talent and to make being on campus a preference to being at home. In the main, they succeeded in both aims.

Motivating young employees in a post-COVID climate
And then along came COVID-19. The shutdown restrictions put in place to slow the spread of the virus back in March meant remote working became the norm overnight. Signs increasingly suggest it may remain that way indefinitely, even as the economy continues to reopen. Many companies, particularly those in the high-tech space, have already stated employees can now work from home permanently, should they choose to do so.

On July 1, NAB announced its headquarters in Melbourne’s Docklands would be mothballed indefinitely, to save on utilities and running costs, while employees continued to work remotely. The bank has flagged the fact that its future real estate requirements are likely to be more modest than they were in pre-pandemic times.

That’s a shift that’s likely to be replicated across Australia and around the globe and it begs the question: what will organisations use to create an environment and a benefit program that keeps employees wanting to be a part of it?

It can’t be flexible hours and work life balance because, just like that, the virus has made them a reality for millions of knowledge workers who’ve been asked to carry on from home for the foreseeable future. Many are likely to continue to work remotely, some or all of the time, after the risk posed by COVID-19 recedes.

Providing the workforce of tomorrow with purposeful employment
Given research suggests Gen Z is strongly motivated by personal convictions and what management consultancy McKinsey & Company has dubbed ‘the search for truth’, the answer may lie in providing them with opportunities to undertake work for which they are able to feel a sense of passion and purpose.

As part of that process, companies need to get better at communicating their purposes; using internal marketing and communications to articulate the value they deliver to customers and the community, to existing employees and potential new hires. Every employee needs to know what their company does and how it gives value to its customer.

"It can’t be flexible hours and work life balance because, just like that, the virus has made them a reality for millions of knowledge workers who’ve been asked to carry on from home for the foreseeable future."

Managers will need to invest time in understanding what motivates each team member and then look for opportunities to align the individual’s interests with the work that needs to be done. This will have not only the benefit of retention but will also lead to a more engaged workforce.

Those which fail to do so may risk losing top talent to organisations which are able to feed their intrinsic motivation more effectively.

Time to think differently
The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the way organisations operate and altered the way employees think about work and workplaces. As businesses rebuild their operations in the wake of the virus, the challenge will be on to find new ways to engage with and motivate the next generation of Australian workers.

Fintech started as tech for financial firms, but the needs of consumers for other money-related activities had already started to broaden its range. Will COVID-19 and a recession mean a retrenchment or an expansion for broader consumer fintech?

The history of fintech is long, centuries even, depending on what you consider “technology.” Even leaving out carrier pigeons and semaphores, most would certainly include 19th century transatlantic cables as an early example of financial technology.  In more recent decades, a way of categorizing fintech was simply technology used for financial businesses, typically banks and investment firms. Often this meant technology built by or for these institutions, and often these products were invisible to their end-customers, or consumers at large. Bloomberg terminals are perhaps a reasonable example.

The most recent, and more broadly interesting, transformations of fintech have had much to do with the consumer market, and the increasing access to financial tools via easy-to-use (though not always) websites and mobile apps on smartphones. Leaving aside many other important enabling, if ancillary technologies such as cybersecurity, cryptocurrencies, and so on, there are many implications of this sudden expansion of “range” for the sector – here are three that might look familiar:

1. Financial institutions aren’t great at understanding consumers

The transition from simply providing online access to existing products (bank accounts, loan information, investment portfolios) to actually understanding, marketing to, and managing customer relationships is not an easy one to make. So, the big leap into online consumer interfacing is rife with risk, as it’s a brave new world for many financial players.

1. Consumers are more comfortable with technology because of their exposure to other, more technologically savvy, industries.

It has only been a couple of decades since many smart people said, “no one is going to use their credit card on the internet.” E-commerce, social media, and Netflix have changed buying behaviors (and many industries’ business models) in the ensuing years. This has opened doors for many challengers to traditional financial players, even though the incumbents have many factors in their favor, not in the least including banking regulations and licenses, and of course, scale.

1. Money is less compartmentalized in the consumer’s mind.

Whereas perhaps not long ago we may have thought of doing “that financial stuff” once a month when bills were due, highly sophisticated financial transactions of many sorts are part of our daily lives – from digital coupons and offers, to digital transactions for items as small as coffee at Starbucks. Loyalty plans, shared payments for Uber rides and even political contributions are all interspersed into our daily routines, communication habits, and social media. This is both an opportunity for new financial tools and instruments, and for businesses to find new ways to attach themselves to consumers. That said, it’s also a risk for financial institutions who believe consumers will look to them first for anything “money-related.”

One way of describing this trend towards the consumerization of fintech is to say that fintech had already moved out of the barn and into the “corral,” but is now at the point of going “free-range” to a greater and greater degree. Keeping track of whose product is whose is quite literally a “branding” problem to be confronted. As fintech products are white-labelled by multiple partners and channels, differentiation becomes difficult and confusing. Managing customers’ expectations and their “journey” begins to be more valuable.

And now, COVID-19.

The potentially enormous economic impact and upheavals that the new Coronavirus is likely to have on the global economy means that everything becomes even more difficult to predict. Will the economic pressures result in a retrenchment for incumbents, and a slowing of entrepreneurial activity amongst new fintech challengers? Or will the pressing and broad-based needs of consumers under duress result in new opportunities for innovation? As an entrepreneur myself, I’d like to believe the latter. However, having been an entrepreneur for many decades, I also know that, without a doubt, there will be winners and losers on both sides of the equation.

Nonetheless, even if slowed down by the current health and economic crisis facing the world, some trends are likely to continue – for one, fintech will very likely have more and more touch points with consumers, both because of a “push” from institutions to create outreach and stickiness, as well as “pull” from customers who want more control and visibility over their money-related activities. Another trend likely to continue, despite (and perhaps because of ) financial pressures on the economy, is the further “unpackaging” of money-related products (insurance, loans, loyalty programs, marketing discounts, etc.) and “repackaging” of these along with the consumer products, services, or even contexts in which those products operate in.

Whether it happens within a few years or perhaps over decades, it would not be entirely surprising if “fintech” eventually becomes “money-tech,”-  mixed in and indistinguishable in the consumer’s mind from the actual product they want, enabled by a broad range of specialized financial offerings. If this were the case, then fintech would, indeed, have gone “free-range.”

Coronavirus (COVID-19) is an unprecedented test of the resilience of businesses large and small. The crisis has plunged vast swathes of the global economy into a deep freeze. But when the markets thaw, will the world will be a different place, or will we fall back into existing trappings?

Many firms have already started to reduce their capital expenditure, examine costs and more will adapt and evolve their strategies over the next 12 months. COVID-19 has already led to a shift in mindset for many businesses: from an opportunistic point of view pre-COVID, where they sought to invest in boosting revenue and profits, to a focus on survival as firms plan how to stay afloat while waiting for the economy to thaw.

Facing up to reality and partnering up for success

In this climate, fintechs that have yet to find a viable business model or sufficient investor funding will ultimately face demise. The question of fighting for survival becomes a reality for more mature fintechs, which already have a viable business model and started generating revenue along with strong and reliable financial backing from investors.

From there, the challenge to survive presents two key considerations. The first being a need to shore up their businesses to endure the difficult economic conditions. Whilst the second is that mature fintechs must prove their fundamental value amidst this post-pandemic crises in order to attract fresh funding from the venture community, competing not only against other fintechs but across other markets and sectors that already exist within a VC’s portfolio.

Fintechs that have grown rapidly perhaps started their international expansion before the crisis, and are finding themselves with disparate operations to fully develop or mature, but still forms an important part of their client offering. Others may have been developing proprietary technology – an expensive and time-consuming task – but now find these projects difficult to continue with a partial and/or remote workforce. Not least the complexities that arise trying to brainstorm and collaborate in this new remote working environment. Never-the-less these projects remain vital to maintaining and building value propositions but require a different approach to suit a new reality.

Critically, fintechs and other financial services firms should evaluate their priorities to determine which services and operations should be kept at the core of the business and which should be added or altered to suit the post-COVID environment. APIs, for example, are the software building blocks critical to improving user experience, adding new functionality and broadening access to new asset classes- offering an efficient way for fintechs to implement small but impactful changes for the business and for customers.

A key pillar of fintech firms’ survival strategy should therefore include carefully planning which APIs are needed to improve or add functionality – for example, firms need to decide whether they want to add access to markets, improving user experience or building new tools – without the need for considerable internal resources.

We have observed that some companies have made strategic decisions to keep engines running by pausing large projects and focusing resources instead on pumping out smaller projects. To tap into these low-hanging fruits but at the same time offer a fresh and consistent experience for customers, even fintechs would do well to partner with new tech providers who offer the tools and resources necessary to successfully deliver quick wins for both the company and customers.

Emerge stronger on the other side of COVID-19

Besides delivering quick and sustainable wins through partnerships, fintechs must also consider how to demonstrate value, pre-empt shifts in demand and boost profitability to maintain attractiveness to current and potential investors in order to secure critical funding. This means they need to focus on their metrics and underlying results. Successful founders must adapt their story to demonstrate that they have extended financial runway, managed productivity and closed sales with a relevant product during this challenging period.

To survive, cutting costs and complexity becomes a matter of life and death for fintechs that want to survive through COVID-19 and come out stronger on the other side. As the industry adjusts, fintechs must find the formula to plan and implement complex technology projects remotely, while keeping costs down and scaling the business to be relevant to customers in a post-COVID-19 world.

COVID-19’s impact and permanent legacy is perhaps still wide open but what is certain is that there will be seismic shifts to fintechs large and small around the world. Survival no longer boils down to just how much backing fintechs have financially, but how strategic and prudent they are in tapping into third-party technologies to relieve cost and operational pressures. Delivering viable projects and the small, quick wins could make a real difference to business and customer experience in the long run and buy fintechs time to strengthen their offerings and fundamentals to emerge stronger on the other side of COVID-19.

Effective sales managers focus on building more team accountability and performance. An accountable sales team is the byproduct of an effective sales manager who holds salespeople accountable for daily behaviors, activities, and results. Effective sales managers improve the team’s sales performance when they commit to consistent coaching and adopt the correct coaching mindset.

Effective Sales Managers Do Monthly 1-on-1 Reviews to Verify Accountability for Forecasts

Monthly one-on-ones are a critical part of sales management because they help both you and your salespeople keep track of their behaviors, activities, and forward progress on sales opportunities. Monthly 1-on-1’s also provide a forum for you to verify each rep’s sales forecast.

One of the biggest manager frustrations occurs when salespeople don’t close their forecasted deals. Salespeople are optimists at heart, and it’s easy for sales managers to believe their rosy sales forecasts. But as the sales manager, you need to temper salespeople’s enthusiasm by finding ways to verify their optimism.

Here two of my favorite sales coaching questions to ask in monthly 1-on-1’s to verify forecasted deals:

“What problems does this customer have that we can solve better than anybody else?”

Your sales team won’t win more deals by identifying customer needs and prescribing solutions. The “need-solution” sales approach just leads to a price-war, because your competitors have solutions too.

To build team accountability and performance, focus your salespeople on identifying customer problems that your company’s unique strengths solve. This is how to get your salespeople to build your company’s unique value proposition into the customer’s recognition of needs phase. For each customer, your salespeople need a compelling answer to the customer’s question, “Why should we buy from you?”

“What are this customer’s buying criteria?”

If the customer hasn’t identified their buying criteria what is this opportunity doing in a rep’s sales forecast? It hasn’t yet been qualified. Or, even worse, maybe your sales rep did not yet ask the customer, “What are your buying criteria?” And that means that all forecasted deals in this rep’s pipeline are suspect. Uh oh.

Effective Sales Managers Adopt the Mindset of a Sales Consultant

A consultant is a person who has some influence over an individual. A manager is someone who acts as if they have direct control over the action. During monthly 1-on-1’s, a managerial style is important. During all other times, given that you can observe only a fraction of what your salespeople are doing, a sales consulting style is best.

All too often we sales managers focus on what a salesperson needs to do to win a specific deal, so we slip into the “tell” mode where we tell the salesperson “do this” or “do that.” This type of interaction with salespeople fails to develop the salesperson’s understanding of effective sales strategies and skills.

A manager acting as a sales consultant asks salespeople more questions. Probe their thinking. A sales manager’s influence comes down to how well he or she helps salespeople see better ways of doing things.

Here are a few questions to ask yourself before conducting a coaching conversation with a salesperson:

What skills or knowledge do I want this salesperson to understand at the conclusion of the conversation?

What questions can I ask that will guide the salesperson to this level of understanding?

Effective Sales Managers Commit to Consistent Coaching

Think about a great coach in your past. Do you have that special person in mind? What did he or she do that was so great?

I’ve heard many different answers to this question, including, “she cared about my success,” “he made me feel important,” “she had high expectations of me,” “he always listened to me,” “she inspired me to get better,” and “he was a great teacher.”

What these answers all have in common is one thing: A rep’s favorite coach was someone who was truly committed to their success. People don’t remember a coach so much for the step-by-step coaching process that person used (though they probably had one). They remember coaches more for how they interacted – and the effort they put into connecting with their team.

All too often, however, sales managers delay having a coaching conversation until the sales rep produces a bad result. Then we rush in and coach ‘em up with all kinds of instructions on what they should do differently….. It’s as if we’re saying, “If you’re bad enough, I’ll coach you.” Waiting until problems are severe and then drowning your salesperson in feedback isn’t helpful. That’s not how to improve team performance.

We ask our salespeople to build trust, identify needs, think strategically, ask for commitment and make strong connections with their customers. Effective sales managers should model these same behaviors in their coaching conversations. Build trust with salespeople, identify their development needs, ask for their commitment to improve, and make strong connections with our team.

Many leaders intrinsically understand the importance of creating a great team or company culture. In a previous post I talked about ways of driving business results by building an awesome culture, but in working with many leaders to help them build that killer culture I’ve found there are a few key concepts that change the way they approach the task.

1. Culture transcends talent

If you look at the top sport franchise dynasties of the past 20 years, it’s interesting to see how certain teams keep managing to win championships despite significant turnover in their rosters. LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman points out that the New England Patriots, San Antonio Spurs, and the Boston Red Sox have collectively won 11 league championships between 1999 and 2014, even though only a single player from each team’s initial championship played for the team consistently over that period. As a Canadian hockey fan, I’ve seen my Olympic hockey teams (both men and women—Go Canada!) consistently win gold medals despite the same trend.

Certainly, these teams do a great job of attracting top talent, but they also have cultures and team-based styles of play that transcend the individual contributors. As the article points out, “teams win when their individual members trust each other enough to prioritize team success over individual glory. It is no coincidence that these teams are known for “The Patriot Way” or “The Spurs Way,” and that television broadcasters often praise them for “unselfish” play.”

The corollary is that if you’re successful in creating an awesome culture, it will act as a lightning rod for like-minded talent. Think about the culture of innovation, technological advancement, and user-focus at companies like Apple or Google. People who are attracted to working at those companies are often drawn to that culture first, making the importance of instilling and reinforcing that culture paramount to becoming a market leader.

2. 80% of your culture comes from your leadership

Good culture and leadership are so important, partly because it provides guidance for how people can behave in a consistent, positive, and productive fashion, particularly when no one’s watching. We do this with our kids all the time. They get home from school hungry for a snack, run into the kitchen and raid the cupboard. Do they pick the granola bar or the chocolate bar? Ideally, they pick the thing that we as parents would like them to pick. At work, the system is amazingly similar.

As an entrepreneur, executive, or team leader, you’re the keeper of the vision and execution strategy for your organization. It’s not surprising then that people tend to behave and make choices in a manner consistent with not only that strategy but your individual personality. An article from FirstRound capital states that 80% of your company’s culture will be defined by its core leaders. It shares a story from the early days of Facebook and an exercise (known as the “one of us” exercise) wherein Mark Zuckerberg wrote down a list of characteristics that he felt described what it meant to work there. Included in this list were things like very high IQ, strong sense of purpose, relentless focus on success, and likes changing and disrupting things. The striking thing about the items on that list was how much they hearkened back to Zuckerberg’s own personality.

At Salesforce, Marc Benioff’s strong sense of philanthropy resulted in the creation of the Salesforce Foundation at the very start of the business and the philosophy of giving back continues to attract like-minded talent. Iconic leaders like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Alan Mulally, Tony Hsieh, and Larry Ellison have all had similar impacts on the culture of their organizations, taken from the pages of their own personalities.

3. It’s not “rainbows and unicorns” BS!

It always surprises me when I hear people describe culture a soft, fluffy, and abstract concept, disconnected from hardcore business results like revenue, growth, and customer satisfaction. Those sentiments can’t be further from the truth. Building an awesome company culture has tremendous ROI in terms of increased profits, decreased turnover, higher goal attainment, and becoming a lightning rod for top talent…not to mention the amazing customer experience that results!

The corporate universe (especially the start-up scene) is rife with stories of organizations with great products and customers, but who simply lacked the operational mojo to succeed. Bill Aulet, the managing director of the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship and a senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management, shares a poignant story about the value of culture:

“I used to think corporate culture didn’t matter. Discussion of vision, mission, and values was for people who couldn’t build product or sell it! We had work to do and this MBA BS was getting in the way! And then my first company failed. Cambridge Decision Dynamics did not fail because we didn’t have a great technology or a great product or customers. It failed as a sustainable, scalable organization because we had no meaningful purpose to create team unity to fight through the tough times.”

Much like the way a positive upbringing helps our kids make choices that positively impact their position in life, the right culture helps our organizations achieve amazing business results quickly, confidently, and sustainably.

So the next time you consider the value of building the right culture for your organization or team, remember it’s not all about holiday bonuses and pizza Fridays. The right culture starts with you but should transcend your talent if you’re looking to catapult your operation to amazing success!

The other day, a friend of mine was asking me for advice on hiring people for his small, but fast-growing business. While I’m no recruiting machine, I have hired a number of people in my day.

What have I learned?

1. Astute (but ultimately poor) candidates can put on a good show in an interview.
2. Professional/educational experience tells no more than 50 percent of the candidate’s story.
3. Even lackluster candidates can produce positive recommendations.

So how do you cut through the noise? Here are four helpful techniques that will help reinforce or debunk the feelings you have towards a candidate.

1. Request an audition

Hiring a sales rep? Get them to sell something to you. Hiring a software developer? Have them solve a logic problem. Hiring a creative designer? Get them to go through a consultation with you. The key is, go beyond their résumé and have them put their experience into practice for you to see firsthand.

One great technique I use to hire sales reps is to have them deliver a 15-minute presentation to me and a few others from my team. I give them the topic in advance, which includes a high-level case study that sets the context. I make sure the topic is relevant to our business and their potential role. I also make sure all the content needed to build their case can be readily found online.

Seeing how the candidates prepare for the task, how poised and confident they are during the exercise, and how they handle themselves after being asked tough questions from the audience speaks volumes about their potential and how quickly they would ramp up in our business.

I am constantly surprised (yet thankful) to see candidates who had been otherwise stellar until this point completely blow the audition step (which saved me much grief down the road).

2. Coach them through your corporate pitch

When I interview candidates, coachability is one of the most important attributes I look for. Coachability speaks to the candidate’s ability to listen (super-important for sales reps), adapt, and externalize knowledge quickly!

To test for this attribute, I use a simple technique. I ask the candidate to imagine that they just got out of the interview with me and a friend calls and says, “Hey, I heard you just had an interview with [company name]…what do they do?” I then ask how they would respond. The candidate will usually try to stumble through your corporate pitch, with some doing a better job than others.

After they’re finished, I thank them and casually say, “That wasn’t bad…let me tell you how I give the pitch.” I then proceed to deliver a well-practiced 30-second pitch and ask the candidate if my narrative made sense. After the innevitable smiling, nodding, and agreement, I ask the candidate to try again; “OK, so imagine the same friend calls and asks you what [company name] does…what would you say now?”

Mark my words: you will be able to immediately tell whether or not the candidate was listening and how skilled they are at being coached and synthesizing newly acquired knowledge!

3. Get stuck at the airport

One of the most important aspects to consider when hiring a candidate is cultural fit. Can you see this person being “one of you”? The reality is, most of us spend more time with the people we work with than we do with our actual families, making the prospect of a working relationship with this candidate kind of like a short-term marriage. That means that in addition to a candidate being able to deliver the professional goods, you need to generally “like” being around them. Can you see yourself working with this person? What about the other people on your team?

In addition to having multiple team members meet the candidate, a great litmus test is asking yourself this question: How would you feel if you were stuck for 10 hours with this person at Chicago O’Hare, in the middle of a snowstorm?

If most of the interviewers are cool with this prospect, you may have a good cultural fit.

4. “Put a gun to your head”

After spending time with a candidate and having your colleagues do the same, you’ll likely circle back as a group to discuss your thoughts. This is where the typical interview process can sometimes break down and make it difficult for the hiring manager to make a decision.

“Well, I don’t know…they have a lot of experience in [A,B, &C ] and I like the fact that they did [X, Y, & Z] really well, but one thing that still bothers me is….yada yada yada…”

Fail!

Want to know how to decide? Get everyone who interviewed the candidate together and first ask them this:

“Gun to your head…no explanations! I only want to hear ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ Would you hire this person?”

If they’re a salesperson, would you trust your top prospect to them? Yes or no.
If they’re a developer, would you trust your biggest project to them? Yes or no.

You’d be amazed at the ease with which you can reconcile complex thoughts when you have a virtual gun pointed at your head and you are forced to give a binary answer! Explanations can then follow but by then everyone’s gut (and most likely correct) reaction has been surfaced.

Professional and educational experience is important when considering a candidate, but they don’t always give you the complete picture. Follow these three techniques and I guarantee by the end of the interview process you’ll be much more confident in the decision you make!

Ready to hire a new salesperson or salespeople for your team?

I know, there can be a certain air of excitement surrounding hiring. Bringing in fresh thinking and the possibility of creating a new leader within your organization are always potential outcomes with new hires. However, as you’re likely already familiar with, hiring can also be stressful, especially when you realize you’ve made a mistake with the person you chose to bring on board.

Often, this can be remedied by inserting a simple step before jumping into a new phase of hiring.

What is this step?

Know what you’re looking for prior to interviewing new candidates.

It’s so common for sales leaders across virtually every industry to spend hours sorting through resumes, booking interview times, and conducting said interviews but they also put almost no time or thinking into what they actually need on their team.

You need to take the time to truly identify the behaviors and activities that historically have brought sales success with other sales reps on your team in the past.

Don’t rely fully on your own thinking though. Take a look at past results, speak with members of your team, speak to other areas of your organization and get a real sense of what’s really needed on your sales team.

Only once you do this, can you be fully prepared to begin hiring new members to join your team.

One of the variables to success in sales is self-confidence. You create a sense of certainty for your clients when you are convicted about who you are, your ability to help produce better results, and the advice you provide them. When you are not confident, you create a sense of uncertainty, your contacts wondering if they are taking too great a risk buying from someone who isn’t sure of themselves.

1. I am a large part of the overall value proposition. Your prospective client is deciding who to buy from according to the experience they have sitting across the table from you, engaged in a conversation about change. The way that they’re judging your company and your solution is through that conversation. Your ability to successfully engage in a conversation that creates value for your client is what generates a preference to work with you and buy from your company. This makes you a rather large part of the value proposition.
2. I believe that I belong at the table when my prospective clients are considering a change. One of the factors that provide an immense amount of confidence is believing that you deserve the right to sit at the table when your clients or prospective clients discuss the kind of change you can help create. When you recognize that the value you create by engaging in this conversation can help them solve their problems, address their challenges and take care of new opportunities that will improve the results, you recognize how important it is that they consult with you before making any decision. If your presence would provide a better outcome, you should have the confidence that you deserve a seat at the table.
3. I believe that I can help my prospective clients identify areas where they may be able to improve the results, even when those better results are unknown to them. When you have the business acumen and situational knowledge that allows you to see areas where your prospective clients can improve, you can act with certainty in pursuing a meeting, knowing that the conversation will allow you to find an area where better results are available to them.
4. I believe that I can create value for any contact who will provide me with an opportunity to meet with them. The operative words here are prospective clients. When you know for sure that you are going to be able to create value for your prospective clients, even if it’s only perspective that helps them understand some variable component of their business, they will leave the conversation with some new possibility.
5. How I sell is a greater factor in winning deals than what I sell. When you know how to sell using a modern, consultative sales approach, you recognize the advantage that you have over your competition in the position you occupy for your prospective client. When you are playing the game at a different level, your approach is the defining, differentiating experience that allows you to win over your rivals.
6. My experience allows me to recognize patterns and quickly understand some of what I might need to teach my prospective client to compel them to change. This is a very difficult dichotomy. Your experience may allow you to recognize a pattern long before your client is aware of their challenge. At the same time, you need to provide your prospective client with the experience of discovering the need to change and the better outcomes available to them. Most of your situational knowledge is subconscious, picking up the patterns without recognizing that you are doing so. This provides a very high level of confidence.
7. Because I have sold the outcomes I help my clients produce many more times than my prospective client has decided to buy those results, I am the one who should lead the conversation. This idea is very similar to belonging at the table with your clients and prospective clients. Not only should you be there to give them advice, but you should also offer them advice on how to decide to change, what options they should explore, how to manage the internal process, and how to ensure they achieve the outcomes they need.
8. Because I’m a consultative salesperson, I am a peer to any contact sitting across a desk for me. If you do not believe that you are a peer, you believe that you are less than that. The desire to become your client’s trusted advisor means that as it pertains to the outcomes you sell and produce for your clients, you are more knowledgeable than your party across the table. Confidence in sales comes from not believing that you are inferior to your prospective client, nor should you be servile or overly deferential. You believe you are a peer, and your client will feel like you’re a peer.
9. The information I share with my clients is valuable enough to them that they would have to pay a consultant to obtain a similar set of insights and experiences. At some point, you will walk out of a sales call and recognize that you just provided your prospective clients with insights and ideas that are worth hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars. You may discover that you’ve done this in an early conversation exploring change and because you haven’t won their business, you’ve delivered value a consultant would charge for without providing the solution. The fact that you can provide that kind of value gives you the confidence necessary to sell and win big deals in B2B sales.

Your confidence is one factor in providing your prospective clients to buy from and take your advice, and isn’t something you are going to learn in sales training. You have to work to get this for yourself. If you lack any of these beliefs, working to gain confidence in those areas will improve your approach and your results.

Old, hierarchical institutions have shown they lack resilience to coronavirus. Their large properties, huge ivory towers designed to be both imposing and reflect their status, are dragging them down. They struggled to adapt to a digital world, let alone digital 2.0, or the coming digital 3.0.

The future is one of digitally networked, decentralised businesses and institutions. These are the businesses thriving in lockdown and which will continue to thrive when a new digital-first consumer emerges from isolation. In this article, I will compare the old systems of the Third Industrial Revolution to the coming Fourth Industrial Revolution, and discuss the ways legacy financial businesses can quickly adapt to become prepared for the ‘new normal’.

Hierarchies vs. Networks (The Coming of The Fourth Industrial Revolution)

Firstly, it’s important to explain what I mean when talking about hierarchies and networks. In his 2016 Book, The Fourth Industrial Revolution, Chief Exec of the World Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab, proposed that technology was leading us into a new industrial epoch.

All three previous industrial revolutions had been built on monetising labour, and making it more efficient by augmenting it with technology. This symbiosis would drive greater efficiency, but at all stages, humans of different levels of ability and skills were needed, and with it came a hierarchical structure, with any networks existing purely as an afterthought.

However, for the first time in history, machines have started to outperform the top-performing humans at certain skilled activities, and this outperformance is growing at exponential levels. Equally, networking technologies have connected the human species globally, digitally enabling more than half the population. In addition, collaborative working tools have made it easier for remote teams to work together in a more networked way, these tools ‘managing’ the workload and automating many of the tasks.

These three factors have meant old hierarchies are becoming increasingly obsolete. The ultimate goal of industrial automation is to achieve maximum efficiency, and the Fourth Revolution, built on a hybrid of physical and cyber systems, is achieving that efficiency through interconnectedness and decentralisation.

Interestingly, coronavirus has amplified this effect and will likely speed up the onset of the next industrial revolution. Being forced to work from home, even old industries that were only just getting to grips with becoming digitally enabled are now being forced to adopt digital-first practices. Only the more agile ones will survive.

The Major Banks vs. Fintech Challengers

The Covid-19 crisis produced a markedly different response between the major banks such as Barclays, Lloyds and NatWest, and the challengers such as Monzo, Revolut and Starling. In the old model of banking, hierarchies existed because customers across the wealth spectrum needed servicing in different ways. Analogue money needed huge amounts of property to store this wealth, often in imposing, intimidating and ultimately expensive vaults. Then money went digital.

Networked banking is a far superior model when the money itself is networked and more decentralised. The issue the major banks have is legacy. Everything from their software, processes, property, mindset and traditions rely on hierarchy, so change is expensive and often cannabilises their core offering or products that have traditionally made them money.

But it was precisely these legacies that made them slow to respond to the demands put on them by the government. When the government promised to underwrite 80% of the risk, the banks still retreated to safety, only issuing 980 loans against 130,000 enquiries before Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, intervened with a slap on the wrist.

In contrast, the challenger banks, already adopting work-from-home practices, were business as usual. The financial impact on their daily operations are minimal, and they can provide a safe working environment for their employees.

Eventually, some of the fintechs, such as Oaknorth, Starling Bank and Funding Circle, were also drafted in to support in issuing the Government-backed CBILS loans. Their data-driven approaches have allowed them to issue these loans much faster, with Oaknorth identifying they could distribute loans to as many as 50% of their customers in much less time than the traditional banks were able to issue them to 1% of applicants.

After COVID-19 has held a grip on the world for most of this year, it’s hard not to see everything through the lens of the pandemic: in the industrial, technological, medical, educational and financial worlds–as well as in our personal lives–the pandemic has colored everything.

The virus has been around long enough at this point that while the emergency remains, the sense of urgency may have passed; COVID, unfortunately, has become an integral part of our lives, like a burglar who busted into the house a few months ago and decided to take up residence there–an uncomfortable and threatening presence that has become all-too-familiar.

And indeed, we may only be at the beginning of the cycle of change that the pandemic has incurred, certain COVID-related changes already seem as though they may become permanent.

One of the sectors that were most deeply and quickly affected by the spread of COVID-19 was the fintech sphere.

Suddenly left without access to a number of the traditional financial services that they were used to, people around the globe turned to fintech platforms en masse: fintech platforms were relied upon to distribute loans, grant access to financial facilitate a large number of transactions that may have previously been conducted in cash, and many other things.

Additionally, the loss of income that many experienced as a result of the pandemic seemed to cause a wave of new users to seek out cryptocurrency and stock trading, as well as a number of other fintech-related methods of generating possible revenue.

Now that the fintech world–along with the rest of the world–has been living with the pandemic for several months, which changes are shaping up to be permanent? Or is it too early to say what the “new normal” is?

The wave of new fintech users that came when the pandemic began seems to have stuck

For Yoni Assia, chief executive of eToro, the answer to the latter question is “yes.”

“I think it is too early to talk about a new normal,” he said. “While we have seen some countries move out of lockdown, in others, the number of COVID cases continues to rise.”

“Similarly, while we have seen market volatility subside, many believe that there is more to come as the markets react to news such as the success of vaccine trials and the impact on jobless figures as government support comes to an end,” he continued.

Still, some of the trends that started as a result of the pandemic seem to be continuing: for one thing, the wave of new users that hit across fintech platforms seems to have led to a healthy crop of new fintech users.

“eToro has seen strong growth this year in terms of new registrants to our investment platform,” Yoni told Finance Magnates. “We saw 100% growth in H1 compared with the same time last year.”

Yoni explained that “part of this is driven by COVID as the pandemic induced market volatility has put markets and investments front-of-mind for many.

Yoni Assia also commented that some of the growth was “also driven by the launch of our zero commission stocks offering,” which “attracted more people to start investing in stocks as a key barrier to entry–cost–has been minimized.”

Additionally, “stock investments on eToro have quadrupled in H1 compared with last year.”

Similarly, Finance Magnates reported in June that other commission-free trading apps were had racked up new users by the ton, seemingly in large part because of COVID: Robinhood passed the 13-million user mark in May; site traffic on WeBull surged by roughly 294.12% from December to May.

Trending toward a cashless society?

Greater engagement with fintech companies on a business-to-customer (b2c) level seems to also have been reflected on a business-to-business (b2b) level in the fintech space, particularly when it comes to companies that have unique payments needs.

For example, Tom Gavin, chief executive of cannabis industry-focused payments company CannaTrac, told Finance Magnates that “as a cashless payment solution for cannabis companies, we have seen a huge demand for businesses looking to onboard with us during the pandemic.”

Tom explained that this particular kind of engagement is due to the fact that “many consumers are being more careful about using cash in an effort to avoid the virus and cannabis companies don’t have many reliable options, like the CannaCard, when it comes to cashless transactions.”

The trend away from cash payments isn’t just a trend in the cannabis industry; however, in fact, the trend away from cash was already underway when the pandemic began. Still, COVID does seem to have had a profoundly accelerating effect.

“The WHO recommended avoiding cash as much as possible in an effort to decrease the spread of the disease,” Tom Gavin continued, adding that “correspondingly, contactless payments have seen a huge increase in popularity.”

Indeed, Mastercard published findings in July 2020 that 51 percent of Americans are now using some form of contactless payment, including tap-to-go credit cards and mobile wallets like Apple Pay.

“Now that many consumers have seen the convenience that comes along with contactless payment methods, I think this popularity will persist, and demand for fintech companies to innovate cashless payment options will continue,” Tom explained.

Innovation has been spurred by pressing needs for change

Indeed, another aspect of the paradigm shift brought about by the COVID pandemic is a change to the rate of innovation within (and without) the fintech sphere.

Indeed, companies who have had the resources to ride out the storm have often been forced to make decisions and build new products quickly, which seems to have accelerated the rate of innovation: “the pandemic has accelerated digital transformation,” eToro’s Yoni Assia told Finance Magnates.

Aditi Sharma, vice president of digital design at JPMorgan Chase, also told Finance Magnates that this innovation has largely been driven by customer needs and demand.

Specifically, “our users are looking for more clarity, control, and communication than ever before, especially after this crisis,” Aditi told Finance Magnates.

This is because “users tend to compare fintech to other experiences in their ecosystem—like how they order a pizza and can track how much time it takes, what process it goes through, and they can control how to pay or where to get it delivered.”

Aditi said that in the fintech space, this has materialized as a hunger for information: “[users] are concerned with the volatility of the market as well and thus like to proactively analyze and forecast market trends using machine learning models before they become financial risks.”

“They want to use intelligent, recommendation-based search (like when they shop online) to only work with relevant data,” Aditi said. “Time is a big factor to them, and thus they are trusting artificial intelligence more than ever before to streamline workflows by cutting down on redundant steps and pre-populating with relevant data.”

However, some innovation in fintech may be stunted by a lack of funding for new companies: CB Insights published findings this month that “fintech deals dropped in Q2’20, reflecting broader market uncertainty and potentially continued tough times ahead.”

The coronavirus pandemic has greatly strained financial services providers and even fintechs, despite their digital prowess, have not been immune to the economic downturn.

With the exception of some of the largest providers, the vast majority of fintechs don’t have the benefit of mature customer bases to help weather the crisis.

Meanwhile, venture capital funding across all startup segments has fallen since the onset of the crisis, cutting off an important source of funds for those yet to achieve profitability. A March survey of more than 1,000 tech startups (not just fintechs) across the globe found that two-thirds didn’t have enough capital to survive past September. This financial vulnerability may have been a factor in the slew of fintech acquisitions by larger financial services providers at the beginning of this year, when coronavirus was just starting to spread around the world.

Likewise, the pandemic also exposed banks’ weaknesses. Within a matter of weeks as the coronavirus took off, banks reported spikes in deferrals and forbearances and a nosedive in profits, even at the largest financial institutions.

Most operations shifted to remote working. And amid all this, banks did their best to take advantage of new emergency lending opportunities like the government’s Paycheck Protection Program.

This last undertaking illustrated why now may be the most opportune time for banks and fintechs to address their respective weaknesses through greater collaboration. To withstand today’s turbulent conditions, fintechs need banks’ mature customer bases, and banks need fintechs’ agility.

As many banks were struggling with mechanisms to collect and process data required for PPP loan applications, dozens of fintechs were bringing solutions to market for facilitating PPP loans. Some fintechs were authorized Congress to distribute PPP loans themselves after arguing they could distribute funds more quickly than traditional banks.

Greater collaboration between banks and fintechs may be one of the most important outcomes stemming from this crisis. Some banks are already moving to establish more ties with fintechs. For example, Blend, a fintech that provides software for online mortgage applications, has reported a strong increase in banks interested in its digital platform in anticipation of such complex transactions.

But it’s also critical that banks perform their due diligence in forming these relationships. Banks don’t want to invest in a partnership that might soon end abruptly because the fintech goes under. Ensuring the fintech has sufficient capital on hand and a viable strategy for navigating the pandemic is paramount.

At the same time, banks also need to be aggressive in pursuing relationships with fintechs that meet such criteria. Achieving greater organizational agility should be paramount for banks right now — and working more with fintechs will provide that agility.

Fintechs are largely unburdened by regulations and legacy systems that hamper banks’ ability to innovate. Many have built their business on the capacity to quickly glean relevant insights from large and disparate sources of customer data — something banks have historically struggled to do.

Additionally, fintech startups tend to be laser focused on optimizing the customer experience for a single product, while banks spread their efforts over a broader set of offerings in the pursuit of serving diverse customer segments.

Additionally, regulators seem ready to give such collaborations a boost by clarifying the regulatory implications for both parties working together. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency recently announced that it will soon propose a rule to clarify the “true lender” doctrine that for years has clouded relationships between banks and nonbanks like fintechs.

Without such clarity, state regulators have charged, fintechs are essentially renting bank charters when they purchase loans from banks, and cannot impose interest rates above state caps on those loans. Beyond resolving the doctrine’s interpretation, new acting Comptroller of the Currency Brian Brooks stated that his first priority will be providing more guidance to facilitate bank-fintech collaborations.

Though banks and fintechs have been working together for years now, many organizations on both sides are still remarkably immature in managing such collaborations. Banks should prioritize establishing mechanisms to foster more productive relationships with startups to prepare for the new normal coming out of this crisis, which is widely expected to be more digitally driven.

That must start with forming a dedicated unit for evaluating and managing potential fintech collaborations. Such units will need strong connections with every business line to gather input, understand priority use cases and business objectives, and scale startup relationships across the organization as quickly as possible.

Another consideration: Many banks may be looking to modernize their infrastructure and collaboration tools to support working more virtually. Doing so will only further serve to facilitate collaborations with startups that are likely already using similar capabilities.

As the industry’s shift to digital accelerates due to the pandemic, the assets and capabilities that startups have developed to underpin their agility will become increasingly valuable. The largest banks may well snap up fintechs struggling financially to gain exclusive access to such assets and capabilities.

But for the vast majority of banks operating with limited resources amid the pandemic, positioning themselves to quickly and fully exploit fintechs’ agility via partnerships will be one of the best actions they can take in recovering from the crisis.

Rewind the clock (to say 35 years ago from today) and cinemas were opening for the first time to the iconic time-traveling antics of Back to the Future. Looking at Doc and Marty and knowing their contrasting personalities – one an eccentric inventor and one a streetwise kid – you wouldn’t think their partnership would work. But their dynamic makes for spectacular viewing!

Similarly, two parties with very different mindsets in finance have recognized the unique collaboration opportunity at their fingertips. Instead of navigating the complexity of time travel though, it’s the customer experience. Just as fintechs and challenger banks bring innovation and digital-first experiences to the table, traditional community banks and credit unions come with their own unique set of skills, including the wealth of experience and knowledge of their local customer bases.

Only a few years ago, discussion in the banking industry was fixated on how fintechs would engulf incumbents. Today, we see the opposite: the beginnings of a budding and unexpected friendship as more fintechs and traditional community banks partner up to reach new heights of success that could really bring banking into the future.

Embracing the creativity of modern banking

Fintechs are the inventors of this unlikely duo – our Doc. Fintechs embrace the modernest of technology, employing digital-first tools and techniques which have seen them rapidly improve efficiencies across the board. They have the cutting edge tools to get the job done, much like the famed DeLorian.

By offering more modern, often cloud-based systems, they are able to deliver real-time software updates, faster processing, quicker transactions and reduced human error. Crucially, they are also matching consumer expectations of on-demand, mobile-ready banking services as more customers look to take control of their own finances via open banking and digital interfaces. This is particularly important in the age of Covid-19, with in-person visits difficult, if not impossible, for many.

In resemblance of Doc’s independent and bold attitude, most fintechs have end-to-end ownership of their own frameworks and digital roadmaps. Meanwhile, traditional community banks and credit unions are often lumbered with legacy technology. Due to their smaller size and lower budgets, most can’t afford to build new software from scratch in-house. Fintechs offer them access to customizable, third-party software and, when chosen and integrated correctly, the right fintech partner can help traditional community banks and credit unions become more competitive and scale up.

There’s no doubt that fintechs can provide banks with technology they would not otherwise have access to. However, it’s not all about being inventive and embracing technology. Like fintechs, Doc was flawed in that he lacked connection to the real world around him and, despite his youth, Marty was the more grounded of the pair. Traditional banks make their own contribution by rendering these fintech offerings more accessible thanks to their wide-reaching, loyal customer bases.

Keeping finance accessible

Although traditional community banks have historically proven themselves more conventional, which can make innovation slower for them, the skills they bring to the table are still of enormous importance. Their on-the-ground, person-to-person values and historic expertise as incumbents in the world of banking have kept customers by their side for not just years but decades, even generations.

While digital banks offer important technological capabilities, traditional banks have practical skills that fintechs haven’t quite mastered. In the same way that Marty brings practical skills like guitar and skateboarding to the table, banks can facilitate physical tasks like processing a cashier’s check. In this way, digital banks are sometimes seen as inaccessible for individuals with lower levels of technological literacy. Research is also showing that it is not only baby boomers visiting banks, with many young people stating that they have no problem going to a branch and interacting in-person. Therefore, traditional bricks-and-mortar banks still have a role to play in providing financial access to certain demographics and offering certain key services, ultimately providing a personal touch that digital-only banks may struggle to achieve.

Additionally, traditional banks often have the upper hand when it comes to regulation. Not only do they already have regulatory approval, but they have the structures and knowledge to know how to approach compliance. They have the superior knowledge of the regulatory landscape and their fintech counterparts should leverage these expertise.

As the banking sector digitalizes, it is also important not to lose the personal knowledge of customers held by traditional community banks and credit unions. Traditional banks have an advantage in that they have the historical data of their clients to tailor services to them. Personal attention to customers is of the utmost importance in building up trust, and knowing your customer is extremely valuable. A person-to-person approach can often see complex problems solved more efficiently, with less of the frustration that could be caused by dealing with things like chatbots with automated generic responses. The importance of personable customer service and the Marty-like qualities of loyalty and approachability are a lesson community banks can teach digital banks trying to achieve more frictionless experience.

A forward thinking partnership

It’s understandable to see why traditional banks have their reservations. They are proud institutions, but this can lead to taking unnecessary risks reminiscent of Marty’s reactions when accused of being “chicken.” Banks need to embrace where things are heading and establish collaborative, mutually-beneficial relationships with fintechs.

As with our time travelling companions, it is the very differences between fintechs and traditional community banks that make them so symbiotic. Their opposing skill sets complement each other perfectly. The combination of digital-first technology and people-first customer service can help both community banks and fintechs cater to the evolving requirements of their customers. As both sides share tools and expertise, they can work in tandem to embrace their next forward thinking adventure.

Attracting and keeping good salespeople is at the top of every sales manager’s list of priorities.  The better we are at inspiring and holding on to great salespeople, the happier, the more engaged, and the more successful they will be. Getting the best contributors to stick around makes our sales management job much, much easier. Here are three things that you may want to pay attention to this summer to help your organization keep the best salespeople.

1.  Remove the Roadblocks. You want your sellers to focus on selling: having conversations with prospective buyers, making sure that they have enough opportunities in the funnel, managing the funnel through from contact to close. What does it say about your organization when salespeople complain to you (or among themselves) that it is easier to sell a prospect than it is to get anything done internally? We hear that kind of thing a lot, and that’s a shame.  As a leader, you must make sure it’s as easy as possible for your team members to get a given deal through the internal systems. That means taking a stand to minimize the administrative load your sales contributors must carry. Yes, they need to do some reporting, and they must get essential information to senior leadership. No, they don’t need to generate detailed reports that no one ever looks at. And no, they shouldn’t be spending big chunks of their day managing inventory or attending operational meetings they don’t contribute to (and are bored by). Do your best to remove the organizational roadblocks that keep salespeople from doing what you hired them to do: interact with buyers.

2.  Consistency. Salespeople want consistency in three different areas. One is how they’re treated. Number two is how you, as the leader, react. And number three is how you, as the leader, choose to act. Let’s look at each one.

Do we treat the members of our sales team consistently? Or do we give some people “special consideration” – and try to run our team with two different rulebooks? The phenomenon of treating a so-called “star performer” differently from the rest of the team is known as entitlement, and it’s poison to any sales organization. Enabling a sense of entitlement is counterproductive. For those not being treated the same way as the “star performer,” there is inevitably resentment, confusion, and a sense of unfair play. And those who are receiving special treatment come to feel like they’re above the law, that  they don’t need to participate in the same way the rest of the team does, and that they are justified in focusing on “me” over “we.” Add it all up, and you’re looking at a tumor on the sales organization. 

How do we react?  Salespeople want to know how we react to certain situations; they want to understand our emotional makeup; and they want stability. If we have a strong emotional response to issue X on Monday, but for no apparent reason downplay the same issue on Tuesday, we are sending mixed messages, and that makes salespeople uncomfortable. Without consistency, our salespeople will not be able to gauge what our reaction will be to anything. They won’t have any sense of what the guardrails are – how we view the big issues, what’s acceptable and what’s not. If our emotional response is unknown, or if it is an ever-changing target, that’s very confusing and unsettling for salespeople. We want them to focus their energy on the buyer environment rather than on figuring out how we’re going to react to something.

How do we act?  What are the processes that we follow? Do we even have a process as sales leaders? Think about all the things that must happen within a sales organization. Do those things happen predictably? Do we include them on our calendar? For instance, do we have brief weekly one-on-one meetings with each salesperson who reports to us? We need to have a known process, and salespeople need to experience for themselves how this process is executed. Most salespeople will tell us that they don’t like process, that too much process represents micromanagement. In fact, the right amount of process equals freedom.  Consistency equals freedom. The sales team should know exactly what the input should be, and exactly what the output will be. That consistency, that comfort, should always be clear to the members of our team, both in terms of their behaviors and ours.

3.  Tools/Training. We always want to ensure that we provide the right tools. Salespeople may sometimes feel bombarded with too many tools or may not understand the value a given tool brings to them as an individual seller. Our job is to identify the tools with the highest impact, and then make sure they are being used properly, to make the salesperson’s working day easier and more efficient. For instance, you certainly want to use this time to train your salespeople. What are the tools that connect to that training? In today’s environment, you want to make sure you’re going over talk tracks based on that training, that you’re role playing based on that training, and that you’re coaching based on that training. Videoconferencing tools like Zoom are going to be important. Another great tool is Crystal, which allows you to identify someone’s behavioral profile before you talk to them.

Personalized playbooks are also important tools, because they clearly lay out the daily and weekly behavioral plan for each individual salesperson – and once you and the salesperson collaborate to create the right behavioral plan, the sky’s the limit. This single step can transform mid-level performers into top-tier performers!

Another tool we would suggest you to closely look at is the Pre-Call Planner, which helps both managers and salespeople to focus on the critical action items for an upcoming call. From a management perspective, you want to identify where your coaching can add the most value before the call, and the Pre-Call Planner is a great coaching tool for identifying the gaps. From an individual contributor perspective, the Pre-Call Planner allows salespeople to strategize ahead of time about the most important things that they should be paying attention to and trying to accomplish during the call. 

Address those three big issues – roadblocks, consistency, and tools – and you will find it much easier to hold on to the best salespeople this summer and beyond!

Hiring is one of the most important things we can do as a leader… and yet for many of the people we work with, it remains something of a blind spot. It’s not a skill set they make a conscious effort to improve. Yes, there are a lot of priorities, and yes, there are a lot of fires to put out. But consider this: The true cost of a bad sales hire is estimated by Harvard Business Review to be as high as $300,000.

That’s a lot of money.

If you stop to think about the number of people working for you, about the potential waste of precious resources, and about the damage to the brand that is so often associated with a bad sales hire, you’ll begin to get a sense of the strategic importance of each and every sales hire. Bottom line: this decision is worth getting right.

I’m constantly amazed at how many sales leaders make hiring decisions based on “intuition”… or on a single 30-minute discussion. These executives are making a decision that could potentially cost their company hundreds of thousands of dollars, and they’re rushing into it. It’s almost like meeting somebody for a 30-minute date and then, based on that one discussion, deciding to get married then and there. I’m sure it’s been done, and perhaps some of those matches are successful, but let’s face it: the odds of things working out well for either party are slim. I often ask people: “If you had to pay the company back for the cost of every bad hire… would you have hired that person?” The answer almost every time is NO.

As sales leaders, we have an obligation to improve the odds. With that goal in mind, here are five things you may want to think about as you begin to create your hiring playbook.

1. Decide if you’re hiring for today or tomorrow. Sure, you may have a slot that you need filled today – but let’s say you know that your business will be changing, and you know that there will be some additions and/or subtractions in the near future. Why not hit pause for a moment  to think about what those needs will look like over the next, say, six months to a year? Is the position you are looking to fill one that you would choose to hire for six months from now? A year from now? If not, should you look at your current staff and make some shifts in roles and responsibilities… and maybe hire somebody slightly different right now? Identify the current hiring priority only after you’ve taken a close look at what your staffing needs will be six to twelve months from now.

2. Invest a little time before you start the process. Before you take part in any interviews, create a job profile. A job profile is not a job description. A job profile identifies exactly the kind of background and skill set necessary to succeed at the job in question. For example: if I’m looking to hire a national accounts person, I’ll need to create a detailed profile of the perfect hire for that particular position. I might decide that I’m looking for somebody who has sold to executives, who has sold an intangible asset (such as a business process), who has successfully sold within a six- to nine-month selling cycle, and who has sold deals that are worth a million dollars or more. When we put together this profile, what we’re really doing is structuring the core requirements of the job. That’s very important, because if we were to hire somebody for our national accounts team who has never sold to executives, or someone whose sweet spot is selling a $20,000 product in a six-day selling cycle, there’s going to be a disconnect. No matter how great the discussion with that candidate might seem, their chance of success is minimal!  But once we’ve created the job profile, we can…

3. Use the SEARCH model. The SEARCH acronym reminds us of the traits we need to see in all new hires, and helps us set benchmark requirements for each trait. It allows us to expand on the work we’ve done on the job profile, and evaluate individual applicants in a systematic way by focusing our attention on six critical requirements that must be met before we make a job offer.

• Skills: What are the specific skill sets needed to be a top performer in this role? Does this person have those skills?
• Experience: What is the optimal level of experience needed to succeed in this role? Does this person have that experience?
• Attitude: What are the attitudinal and cultural expectations for the person who takes on this role? (For instance, collaborative team player, not “My way or the highway.”) Does this person have that attitude? How do we know?
• Results: How will we quantify what success will look like for the person in the role? What are the benchmarks we will be measuring and when will we be measuring them? What are the parallel results this applicant has previously delivered at other organizations?
• Cognitive skills: What types of cognitive skills – for instance, memory, logic, and reasoning – are most important for success in this role? Why are they important? Does this applicant possess those cognitive skills?
• Habits: What specific work habits do we want the person in this role to possess and reinforce with other members of the team? (For instance: the habit of tracking one’s own behaviors, and analyzing the ratios that connect to them, without being asked to do so.) Does this person possess those habits? How do we know?

4. Plan your interview questions ahead of time… and base them on the SEARCH model. Write down the major questions you intend to ask during the interview, making sure they connect to the specific SEARCH criteria you are using to evaluate this candidate. The best sales leaders know most of their interview questions ahead of time. Something like eight out of ten managers, however, make up most or all of their interview questions as they go along, based on the interactions they are having with the applicant. That is a reactive interview, and it is far less effective than a proactive interview.

5. Turn on your camera during virtual interviews. Since more and more interviews these days are being held via videoconference, and since most video conferencing platforms offer a recording option, this is now relatively easy to do. (Make sure the candidate knows you are recording the discussion.) Analyzing the interview video closely before you make a hiring decision will tell you a great deal about the applicant: how they interact socially, how they communicate with new business contacts, what their body language says about them, what their level of self-awareness is, and so on. Analyzing the video before you make a decision gives you a slight edge, one that you can use to your organization’s advantage.

With the sudden and ongoing shift to remote work for millions of American employees, many are starting to speculate that working from home (WFH) may be part of the “new normal” in a post-COVID world, even after the necessity of the work arrangement has passed.

This begs the question: Will the ability to work effectively from home become a job skill employers look for in their hiring process?

Working from Home as the New Normal

According to survey results published by Willis Towers Watson, roughly three-quarters of employers adjusted their workplaces in response to COVID-19; 53% report that their full-time employees are now WFH.

The Willis Towers Watson survey also found that employers expect two-thirds of their workforce to be working in person on-site full time in the post-COVID-19 world.

That’s certainly more than half, and it’s more than the 37% who are currently working on-site, but it’s a big dip from last year, when 87% were working in person.

Not All Employees Thrive in a WFH Environment

The logistical challenges of shifting significant proportions (or even all) of a company’s workforce to remote work are enough to make any manager cringe. But logistics are not the only challenge.

Some employees simply aren’t great at WFH, and many don’t even like the arrangement. According to a survey by Fishbowl, roughly 55% of respondents said they would choose WFH as their new normal. That’s more than half but certainly not an overwhelming majority. Even employees who prefer to WFH might lack some of the traits necessary to do so effectively.

Traits of Effective WFH Employees

So what exactly would comprise a WFH skill set? A few come to mind, such as independence, organization, time management, technical aptitude for telecommunications technologies, and the ability to develop and maintain strong relationships.

As WFH arrangements become less of an exception and more of a standard practice in many industries, these are the types of skills employers should consider looking for when hiring new staff.

It’s also a good idea to work on developing those skills where they might be lacking in existing staff—learning and development leaders can play an important role in this process.

4 dangers of inexperience:

Misled easily. Inexperience is blinded by unverified optimism. First-time investors get starry-eyed, for example.
Decide quickly. Inexperience – unaware of potential pitfalls – blissfully moves forward. Naiveté believes the path forward is easy when it’s hard.
Puff up naturally. Inexperienced novices haven’t learned that humility applies most when you succeed.
Feel jealousy instinctively. “Why did she get promoted when I’m more qualified?” The blindness of jealousy prolongs ignorance and magnifies agony.
The danger for experienced novices is the false belief that skill in one area automatically transfers to other areas.

The perception of skill prevents development.

5 powers of experience:

Healthy caution. Weathered captains feel a little uneasy when seas are calm. Painful past mistakes create healthy caution.
Not knowing. Grey-hairs wonder about what they don’t know. Experienced leaders know that learning begins with not knowing. Confident ignorance is painful.
Thick skin. Seasoned leaders understand that inexperience doesn’t understand. People judge you out of ignorance.
Steady progress. A wrinkly brow knows reckless action hurts, and short-cuts are dead-ends.
Respect for decisions. Toddlers don’t grasp the implications of pulling on tablecloths.
The power of experience is independent thought in the face of multiple options.

Quiet reflection is the source of independent thought.

5 questions that enable independent thought:

What don’t I know?
What’s important to know?
Who has experience? (Most experienced people love to share their knowledge.)
What might go wrong?
Who might be impacted by this decision?
In a turbulent world, experience is a foundation for learning.

What has experience taught you?

Which of the 5 powers of experience seem most relevant to you?